ACC Party-Crashers

The Virginia Cavaliers took out #19 NC State tonight, so they move to 6-2 in the ACC. Not bad for a team picked 7th, with only 3 experienced players returning.

The credit belongs to the young men who are more than the sum of their parts, like Joe Harris with 22 points tonight, looking more like a guy who should be playing for Navy.

But the blueprint is from Tony Bennett, a real son-of-a-coach from Wisconsin. He is the NCAA's all-time 3-point shooter at Wisconsin-Green Bay. He played 3 years in the NBA with Charlotte, then was National Coach of the Year at Washington State, and is now in his 4th year at Virginia.

It's sort of the Wisconsin-Bo Ryan-Dick Bennett philosophy of slowing down the game to get set on defense. They held a high-scoring and high-tempo NC State team to 55 points. Now hopefully the fans have seen the toughness and start filling John Paul Jones Arena. It's a good product.

I Cried For You On The Kitchen Floor

You told us that you were trouble...

It was one year ago that we heard the news. Amy Winehouse died at 27, and nobody was surprised by it. I always defended the music and not the life she lived, but the two were hopelessly intertwined. Who else wrote and sang about a refusal to go to Rehab?

Her style was one of a kind, a soulful, retro anti-diva that broke all conventions. Crooner Tony Bennett recorded duets with her and described her as "a rare artist who knew how to take chances and is in the pantheon of world-class singers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday."

Amy Winehouse's second album Back To Black, was released in the fall of '06, and is one of the top compilations of a generation:

You Know I'm No Good
Tears Dry On Their Own
Rehab
Back To Black
Wake Up Alone
Me & Mr. Jones
Just Friends

But as few can create a masterpiece, even fewer can handle what comes next. Lauryn Hill never followed up the sensational Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, but she's not dead and is now a mother of six. Adele put out a second monster album and is keeping a low-profile before she returns. Winehouse's life went the other way, one train wreck after another, and there would be no more solo album releases before her death on July 23, 2011.

And as flawed as she was, as much as we point the finger for how she lived her life, she was still somebody's daughter. Which is now the subject of the book Amy, My Daughter by Mitch Winehouse.

Full proceeds from the book go to The Amy Winehouse Foundation to provide "help, support or care for young people, especially those that are in need by reason of ill health, disability, financial disadvantage or addiction."

Our tears dried on their own.